1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed towards printed pharmaceutical prescription labels for prescribed pharmaceutical products and newsletters that are directed to the individual receiving a prescribed pharmaceutical product, and in particular to the printing of a combination prescribed pharmaceutical prescription label and newsletter directed to the individual receiving the prescribed pharmaceutical product.
2. Discussion of the Background
Advances in medicine in general as well as in the pharmaceutical sciences have lead to an increase in the vicinity and complexity of prescribed pharmaceutical products. When an individual visits a medical service provider, he or she commonly receives a prescription for a drug or other prescribed product. The individual is then usually required to visit a pharmacist in order to receive the prescribed product. The prescription information, which is generated by the medical service provider, is either carried to the pharmacist by the individual in the form of a written prescription, or the medical service provider may communicate the prescription information directly to a pharmacist through other means.
A pharmacist will fill the prescription by preparing the proper type and quantity of drug or other product that was prescribed by the medical service provider and, if necessary, place the product into an appropriate container. The pharmacist then prepares a label for the container and affixes this label to the product or that container. The pharmacist then gives that container to the individual that is to receive the prescribed pharmaceutical product.
Many prescribed pharmaceutical products require the individual using them to follow certain instructions or to limit their behavior in order to have the product work most effectively or limit undesirable side effects. The label placed upon the pharmaceutical product or container may contain a short description of the most important instructions for the individual using the product, however, the label of most containers is not large enough to contain a more detailed listing of instructions or helpful information which is associated with the prescribed product.
A pharmacist may verbally provide further instructions and helpful information associated with the product to an individual receiving the product at the time the individual receives the product. This practice is limited by the fact that the individual may not have time to receive this information verbally and may not remember all of the information even if time is taken to receive it. The pharmacist is also available to answer questions the individual receiving the product may have, either at the time the individual receives the product or thereafter, but this process requires the customer, who may not be familiar with the pharmaceutical product or the relevant health concerns, to identify the pertinent questions. If the individual has questions after receiving the product, he or she must then expend the additional effort to contact the pharmacist in order to ask the question.
Recent developments in health care management have increased the productivity demands upon the modern pharmacist. Modern pharmacists are under pressure to decrease the time it takes to provide a prescribed pharmaceutical product to an individual. This has resulted in the search for techniques which allow the pharmacist to spend less time in providing prescribed pharmaceutical products while maintaining the level of service to their customers and without sacrificing the quality or quantity of information the pharmacist provides to the individual receiving prescribed pharmaceutical products.
A recent development in the delivery of prescribed pharmaceutical products is the automated printing of a customized newsletter that is directed to the individual recipient of a prescribed pharmaceutical product. Systems which generate such customized and directed newsletters are described in commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 08/764,139 and 09/226,209, U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 08/764,139, 09/226,209 and all references therein are incorporated herein by reference. Customized and directed newsletters produced by these systems often include such information as instructions to the user of a prescribed pharmaceutical product, helpful information concerning side effects, information which may be of interest to individuals with conditions for which that pharmaceutical product is prescribed as well as information and purchasing incentives for products which may assist individuals with such conditions. The printed nature of these newsletters allow the individual to retain the information and review it at his or her leisure or at a time well in the future after the information has been forgotten.
Prior systems which generated customized and directed newsletters to individuals receiving prescribed prescription products utilized a separate document containing only that newsletter information. These systems required the pharmacist to manually assure that the correct individual received the customized newsletter. Matching the newsletter to the proper individual added to the time required to provide a product to the individual and introduced a risk of error that a customized newsletter could be given to the wrong person. This latter error may have grave consequences due to the fact that suggestions and recommendations contained in the newsletter are being given from a pharmacist to an individual with different medical conditions than the conditions for which the newsletter was generated. This potential risk may lead the pharmacists to simply discard the customized newsletter if there is any doubt as to the individual for whom it is intended.